the branch wiring for said lights is already operating at capacity - the facility owner (or builder) already cost-optimized the installation to satisfy the lighting requirement.
Ah, that's quite true. This would be a perfect example of the sort of infrastructure upgrading that would be needed if we moved to an all-electric car society and why we simply can't juice up anywhere.
A Nissan Leaf has an 80kW motor and a 24kWh battery. If you're easy on the throttle, you might get 1 hour of cruising around on a charge.
Uh... more like 4. Sure, if you're driving on the highway, on a hot day, with the AC on, yeah the leaf will only last about an hour. (Hence, you know, a trailer...)
Also, presuming there are people who sell electric cars, and people who buy electric cars, and people who want to make a buck charging electric cars, why wouldn't the street lights in a mall (or an upgraded system) use more than 5 amps (at the 480V they apparently use for street lights)? I mean, typical household wall outlets can supply 12amps at 120V. Which is 5 miles per hour of charge. (You know, I'm not sure what speed they're assuming.) I think your math strayed off target when you assumed an 80kW motor used anywhere near it's full power during typical cruising.
Well your first problem right there is that you have 4 children. Holy shit dude.
The second problem here, for anyone that follows your footsteps, is that while the typical birth is perfectly possible at home, any complication quickly goes from "that's troubling" to "oh shit everyone is dead". I mean, for your three home births did you have to deal with twins? 12lbs babies? Premies? Breech births? C-section? How quickly could you hook up an apnic baby to a ventilator? Because you're going to lose the baby if you're not quick enough. And for a lot of these scenarios, you're going to lose the mother as well.
electric vehicle... charge so quickly as to be useful
You mean, overnight in my garage? During the 8 hours I'm at work?
when you can call for a cheap robotic taxi wherever, whenever you want?
How is this ANY different from a regular taxi? (other than paying an engineer to upkeep all the automated system rather then 5 immigrants driving the cars). And don't get me wrong, in some places taxis make sense. But they don't make sense everywhere. Indeed, other than big cities where owning a car is a pain, taxi services just don't cut it.
Also, no, electric cars with 200 mile range would be horrible for taxis. They have to run ALL DAY. No, hybrids seem like a good idea for taxis. Electric for stop'n'go, and a regular engine for going all day long.
As it stands, 99% of cars spend probably close to 99% of their time parked and unused. That is inefficient.
And my home spends half it's time just plain empty (except for the cats). That too, is pretty inefficient. But you can't have a timeshare to my house. It's mine, back off.
I never understood why they couldn't hitch up a trailer carrying a gasoline generator. BAMF, instant hybrid that could travel interstate.
Of course, I also never understood why we couldn't put coin-op outlets on all those light poles throughout the mall parking lots. While 120v isn't going to be a fast charge, it'll juice up your car while you shop.
Ah, the "respect has to be earned" line. Such a classic. I've got a great comeback for it too.
There are different levels of respect. For example, this is my desk. I respect it as a desk. It holds things for me. If I pound my fist on it, it neither cries nor complains. I do not respect it as a human. It has done nothing to warrant that respect.
You are a human though. I have to respect that. I might not respect you as a peer. Or as a person of reason. That is, as you say, respect that has to be earned. But as you look bipedal, move about in a human fashion, and seem more or less among the species homo sapiens, you have earned my respect as a human.
And respect is a two-way street. *walks over with pounding fist*. So do you respect me as a human?
This would work a lot better in person, presumably, and could be built up. I mean, unless they're an asshole, they'll agree about respecting you as a human. And then you could ask if they respect you as a... I dunno, a peer or something. If they said no, well that's something we can certainly work on.
I'm pretty sure that's a good example of BULLSHIT.
It's not that you're wrong, I mean, if you squint, and spin just right, you could take your definition and meaning of phrases to be correct. But the phrase "for most of the US, the nearest public transportation is several days walk" will be taken by most people to mean the most of the US population. You know, the ones doing the walking. It's like one of those stupid jokes where they purposely miscommunication or say something that could have two meanings. So your post primarily consists of bullshit.
And apparently it's an alluring piece of bullshit that the moderators ate up. Bravo Slashdot.
Populating Mars. Hundreds of thousands of people in space. It's a nice dream, but there's some serious limitations that he's going to have to overcome.
Simply put, space is expensive. Unless we developed some sort of space elevator, we'd have to burn a hell of a lot of fuel to get people into space, not to mention all the supplies they'd need to sustain themselves for any length of time. And you would have to have some reason for them to go. Some way to make money up there. Like mining the moon for fuel. Or gathering rare-earth materials from asteroids. The old-hat idea in sci-fi books was that manufacturing in zero-G would have some sort of miraculous benefit which would justify the cost.
There are loads of other benefits if we can develop the sort of material that would be needed for a space elevator.
Long lasting ribbons of carbon-nanotubes giga-pascals strong. I'm just saying there are a few other applications other than a space elevator.
And once you have something to climb, it's not like you can simply ride the thing to the top. At 90 miles an hour, it would still be a week before you reached GEO. You have to power it somehow. Wireless energy transmission, like with lasers or something is looking like the best bet at the moment, and there are still serious issues and limitations to be overcome.
And sadly, some of these limitations may never be overcome. Alternatives may never be found. It might simply be impossible.
But it'd be a really good thing to try and overcome those problems. Good as in the advancement of the human species sort of good.
Of course, this guy is probably a little out of touch. Did he really use the term "ordinary" next to a price tag of $200,000?
This. The entire argument goes in an entirely different direction once everyone remembers one simple thing:
NUKES!
Seriously, someone needs to have a magazine to bap the noses of any military types that start waving their dicks about and seem to forget that first-world powers can't wage war on each other with mutually assured destruction.
They have a defense against incoming ballistics that can detonate a mile above the target?
Neat.
Because we have 11 carriers. The opposing world has a lot more than 11 ICBMs. If we're at the point that great powers are coming to blows (as in any point in which our military has an opportunity to justify their existence) and NUKES are flying, our carriers are FUCKED.
Let me be clear about this. The offensive capabilities of our peers far outreaches our own defensive capabilities. We would, of course, obliterate them in turn and it's a MAD MAD world. This is a little detail that a lot of gung-ho military types seem to forget every now and then. As far as defending our shores from invasion, the Army, Navy, and Airforce were obsolete as soon as we had world ending power on the tip of a missile that could go around the world.
All that aside, yeah, it's pretty handy having a portable city. Damn expensive though.
Any sort of technological knowhow like stenography will be a plus sign.
Generally salespeople and managers just aren't that geeky.
Reddit, for example, run by fairly competent people.
Everyone that tries to cater to geeks needs to be a little geeky themselves.
Especially in a place like Slashdot.
Doritos.
You bet on a house. You lost.
The reason it was a bad bet isn't necessarily the government's fault, but they could have done more to keep the bubble from forming and alleviating the problem afterwards.
But no one owes it to you to "make you whole".
The reason that the government stepped in to help the financial market is because it would have taken down the government with it. The reason it made a bet on solar power is because it would enrich everyone.
Uh, DNA would be the HDD, RNA would be the RAM, and proteins would be the opcodes currently being processed.
The analogy breaks down at a lot of points. Like RNA not changing during runtime like RAM, and the protein being "processed" by a massively distributed an pipe-lined network of biological cells rather than a digital chip... but you're right about the OS consisting of material previous retrieved and expressed DNA.
You know there's no upper limit to how much money people are going to accept if you want to give it to them, right? These people aren't buying goods, they're buying the ability to say that they spent SOOO MUCH on their goods. It's luxery goods. The pricetag is literally as much as people want to spend on it.
What makes you think this was a "simple" pat-down? Do you think it's impossible that a minimum-wage screener with little to no training moving through that many people would ever misbehave?
uh, maybe, but when they say function I think they mean something with a little more impact. Things that are actually selected for. You know, natural selection. This functional non-encoding DNA was known about before they came out with these papers.
Not that I'm a pro or anything, but junk DNA was anything that didn't encode proteins, right? And previously it was thought that encoding proteins was the entire purpose of DNA. Well now they found additional function of the non-encoding DNA. And these ENCODE papers hammer it home I guess?
Not that there isn't still junk DNA that isn't doing anything. All that virus code muddled about in there probably isn't helping us out any.
Any time there's a scientific discovery, or some news about what scientists have learned today, you get a wave of people that instantly baulk and assume that the entirety of scientific knowledge was just overturned and that everything that we've ever known was simply wrong. They see the new discovery as proof that the scientists were ignorant prior to the discovery.
Then you've got the crowd that assumes a discovery applies to 100% of whatever. For example, ENCODE has found function for some of the DNA that was considered junk. And sure enough the wave of ignorance came along and assumed that all DNA now had some purpose and the idea of junk DNA was wrong all along.
Informing the ignorant masses is hard. Informing the willfully ignorant masses is really hard.
I understand the sentiment, but why on earth were you working a shit job when you were so talented?
There has to be some sort of explanation. And unless you provide one, people are going to make assumptions. Maybe you were tied to an area that didn't have any tech jobs because your ailing grandmother needed someone to take care of her. Or maybe you've got mental issues that keeps you from being a productive member of society and you were finally fired from your last job. Maybe you were just apathetic and took the path of least resistance.
tl;dr Your story doesn't convince anyone not to make negative assumptions unless you provide a positive explanation for why a talented person had a shit job.
Slashdot Mirror
the branch wiring for said lights is already operating at capacity - the facility owner (or builder) already cost-optimized the installation to satisfy the lighting requirement.
Ah, that's quite true. This would be a perfect example of the sort of infrastructure upgrading that would be needed if we moved to an all-electric car society and why we simply can't juice up anywhere.
A Nissan Leaf has an 80kW motor and a 24kWh battery. If you're easy on the throttle, you might get 1 hour of cruising around on a charge.
Uh... more like 4. Sure, if you're driving on the highway, on a hot day, with the AC on, yeah the leaf will only last about an hour. (Hence, you know, a trailer...)
Also, presuming there are people who sell electric cars, and people who buy electric cars, and people who want to make a buck charging electric cars, why wouldn't the street lights in a mall (or an upgraded system) use more than 5 amps (at the 480V they apparently use for street lights)? I mean, typical household wall outlets can supply 12amps at 120V. Which is 5 miles per hour of charge. (You know, I'm not sure what speed they're assuming.) I think your math strayed off target when you assumed an 80kW motor used anywhere near it's full power during typical cruising.
What does 'respecting someone as a human' get them?
Basic human rights.
Well your first problem right there is that you have 4 children. Holy shit dude.
The second problem here, for anyone that follows your footsteps, is that while the typical birth is perfectly possible at home, any complication quickly goes from "that's troubling" to "oh shit everyone is dead". I mean, for your three home births did you have to deal with twins? 12lbs babies? Premies? Breech births? C-section? How quickly could you hook up an apnic baby to a ventilator? Because you're going to lose the baby if you're not quick enough. And for a lot of these scenarios, you're going to lose the mother as well.
This is why healthcare for the healthy is cheap.
And yet girls right now earn more income in the factories in Shenzhen than boys. Give it time, all things balance out.
electric vehicle ... charge so quickly as to be useful
You mean, overnight in my garage? During the 8 hours I'm at work?
when you can call for a cheap robotic taxi wherever, whenever you want?
How is this ANY different from a regular taxi? (other than paying an engineer to upkeep all the automated system rather then 5 immigrants driving the cars). And don't get me wrong, in some places taxis make sense. But they don't make sense everywhere. Indeed, other than big cities where owning a car is a pain, taxi services just don't cut it.
Also, no, electric cars with 200 mile range would be horrible for taxis. They have to run ALL DAY. No, hybrids seem like a good idea for taxis. Electric for stop'n'go, and a regular engine for going all day long.
As it stands, 99% of cars spend probably close to 99% of their time parked and unused. That is inefficient.
And my home spends half it's time just plain empty (except for the cats). That too, is pretty inefficient. But you can't have a timeshare to my house. It's mine, back off.
I never understood why they couldn't hitch up a trailer carrying a gasoline generator. BAMF, instant hybrid that could travel interstate.
Of course, I also never understood why we couldn't put coin-op outlets on all those light poles throughout the mall parking lots. While 120v isn't going to be a fast charge, it'll juice up your car while you shop.
Ah, the "respect has to be earned" line. Such a classic. I've got a great comeback for it too.
There are different levels of respect. For example, this is my desk. I respect it as a desk. It holds things for me. If I pound my fist on it, it neither cries nor complains. I do not respect it as a human. It has done nothing to warrant that respect.
You are a human though. I have to respect that. I might not respect you as a peer. Or as a person of reason. That is, as you say, respect that has to be earned. But as you look bipedal, move about in a human fashion, and seem more or less among the species homo sapiens, you have earned my respect as a human.
And respect is a two-way street. *walks over with pounding fist*. So do you respect me as a human?
This would work a lot better in person, presumably, and could be built up. I mean, unless they're an asshole, they'll agree about respecting you as a human. And then you could ask if they respect you as a... I dunno, a peer or something. If they said no, well that's something we can certainly work on.
I'm pretty sure that's a good example of BULLSHIT.
It's not that you're wrong, I mean, if you squint, and spin just right, you could take your definition and meaning of phrases to be correct. But the phrase "for most of the US, the nearest public transportation is several days walk" will be taken by most people to mean the most of the US population. You know, the ones doing the walking. It's like one of those stupid jokes where they purposely miscommunication or say something that could have two meanings. So your post primarily consists of bullshit.
And apparently it's an alluring piece of bullshit that the moderators ate up. Bravo Slashdot.
Neat, hadn't heard of a launch loop before. Apparently I need to spend more time on Wikipedia.
Populating Mars. Hundreds of thousands of people in space. It's a nice dream, but there's some serious limitations that he's going to have to overcome.
Simply put, space is expensive. Unless we developed some sort of space elevator, we'd have to burn a hell of a lot of fuel to get people into space, not to mention all the supplies they'd need to sustain themselves for any length of time. And you would have to have some reason for them to go. Some way to make money up there. Like mining the moon for fuel. Or gathering rare-earth materials from asteroids. The old-hat idea in sci-fi books was that manufacturing in zero-G would have some sort of miraculous benefit which would justify the cost.
There are loads of other benefits if we can develop the sort of material that would be needed for a space elevator. Long lasting ribbons of carbon-nanotubes giga-pascals strong. I'm just saying there are a few other applications other than a space elevator. And once you have something to climb, it's not like you can simply ride the thing to the top. At 90 miles an hour, it would still be a week before you reached GEO. You have to power it somehow. Wireless energy transmission, like with lasers or something is looking like the best bet at the moment, and there are still serious issues and limitations to be overcome.
And sadly, some of these limitations may never be overcome. Alternatives may never be found. It might simply be impossible.
But it'd be a really good thing to try and overcome those problems. Good as in the advancement of the human species sort of good.
Of course, this guy is probably a little out of touch. Did he really use the term "ordinary" next to a price tag of $200,000?
This. The entire argument goes in an entirely different direction once everyone remembers one simple thing:
NUKES!
Seriously, someone needs to have a magazine to bap the noses of any military types that start waving their dicks about and seem to forget that first-world powers can't wage war on each other with mutually assured destruction.
They have a defense against incoming ballistics that can detonate a mile above the target?
Neat.
Because we have 11 carriers. The opposing world has a lot more than 11 ICBMs. If we're at the point that great powers are coming to blows (as in any point in which our military has an opportunity to justify their existence) and NUKES are flying, our carriers are FUCKED.
Let me be clear about this. The offensive capabilities of our peers far outreaches our own defensive capabilities. We would, of course, obliterate them in turn and it's a MAD MAD world. This is a little detail that a lot of gung-ho military types seem to forget every now and then. As far as defending our shores from invasion, the Army, Navy, and Airforce were obsolete as soon as we had world ending power on the tip of a missile that could go around the world.
All that aside, yeah, it's pretty handy having a portable city. Damn expensive though.
Does it matter?
Any sort of technological knowhow like stenography will be a plus sign.
Generally salespeople and managers just aren't that geeky.
Reddit, for example, run by fairly competent people.
Everyone that tries to cater to geeks needs to be a little geeky themselves.
Especially in a place like Slashdot.
Doritos.
You bet on a house. You lost.
The reason it was a bad bet isn't necessarily the government's fault, but they could have done more to keep the bubble from forming and alleviating the problem afterwards.
But no one owes it to you to "make you whole".
The reason that the government stepped in to help the financial market is because it would have taken down the government with it. The reason it made a bet on solar power is because it would enrich everyone.
Uh, DNA would be the HDD, RNA would be the RAM, and proteins would be the opcodes currently being processed.
The analogy breaks down at a lot of points. Like RNA not changing during runtime like RAM, and the protein being "processed" by a massively distributed an pipe-lined network of biological cells rather than a digital chip... but you're right about the OS consisting of material previous retrieved and expressed DNA.
You know there's no upper limit to how much money people are going to accept if you want to give it to them, right? These people aren't buying goods, they're buying the ability to say that they spent SOOO MUCH on their goods. It's luxery goods. The pricetag is literally as much as people want to spend on it.
You could take this the other way and say that the USD is facing some major inflation.
Where 100% of the intellectual property rights of the original owners is fully respected within the Louvre.
What makes you think this was a "simple" pat-down? Do you think it's impossible that a minimum-wage screener with little to no training moving through that many people would ever misbehave?
So an intron is a.... NOP slide?
uh, maybe, but when they say function I think they mean something with a little more impact. Things that are actually selected for. You know, natural selection. This functional non-encoding DNA was known about before they came out with these papers.
Not that I'm a pro or anything, but junk DNA was anything that didn't encode proteins, right? And previously it was thought that encoding proteins was the entire purpose of DNA. Well now they found additional function of the non-encoding DNA. And these ENCODE papers hammer it home I guess?
Not that there isn't still junk DNA that isn't doing anything. All that virus code muddled about in there probably isn't helping us out any.
Any time there's a scientific discovery, or some news about what scientists have learned today, you get a wave of people that instantly baulk and assume that the entirety of scientific knowledge was just overturned and that everything that we've ever known was simply wrong. They see the new discovery as proof that the scientists were ignorant prior to the discovery.
Then you've got the crowd that assumes a discovery applies to 100% of whatever. For example, ENCODE has found function for some of the DNA that was considered junk. And sure enough the wave of ignorance came along and assumed that all DNA now had some purpose and the idea of junk DNA was wrong all along.
Informing the ignorant masses is hard. Informing the willfully ignorant masses is really hard.
I understand the sentiment, but why on earth were you working a shit job when you were so talented?
There has to be some sort of explanation. And unless you provide one, people are going to make assumptions. Maybe you were tied to an area that didn't have any tech jobs because your ailing grandmother needed someone to take care of her. Or maybe you've got mental issues that keeps you from being a productive member of society and you were finally fired from your last job. Maybe you were just apathetic and took the path of least resistance.
tl;dr Your story doesn't convince anyone not to make negative assumptions unless you provide a positive explanation for why a talented person had a shit job.
It is amazingly depressing that it comes down to "who you know" instead of "what you do". Doubly so for engineering.
But this matches my experience.